7x10 Inheritance

[7.3/10] The stereotype for Trekkies is obsession with continuity and picayune details. That’s never been my relationship with the franchise. Sure, I may chuckle at the “warp speed limit”, or the inconsistency of Data’s ability to use contractions, or how the technique that saved the day last week is conveniently forgotten by the next week. But it was William Shatner, of all people, who said that Star Trek was always about the stories more than the finer points of the technical specs or the wider universe.

That hits home for me. I can tolerate a lot in terms of technological implausibility of narrative contrivance if I can connect with the characters and emotions involved. That’s especially important for an episode like “Inheritance”, which basically fails the smell test in terms of logistics and continuity, but thrives when it comes to exploring its main characters’ psychology and relationships.

In effect, Data meets his long lost mother. Dr. Juliana Tainer turns out to be Noonien Soong’s secret wife, who helped construct Data and was around for most of his “childhood” before they wiped his memory. It’s a...convenient retcon. Star Trek is no stranger to having unknown or unseen family members of major characters suddenly come out of the woodwork. Still, the presence of this secret maternal figure, who Data has no recollection of, Dr. Soong never mentioned, and there’s otherwise no mention of in the records is a big, suspect narrative leap. No wonder Data’s initially suspicious as to whether her story’s true.

And yet, if you can accept the implausibility of her existence and their reunion, their scenes together are wonderful. I am, like many folks, part of a broader family where long lost aunts, uncles, cousins, and even parents have suddenly appeared. “Inheritance” gets the mixed blessings of these things right: the trepidation of an erstwhile stranger whom you’re related to, the joy of enriching your family tree with more smiling faces, and the pain of learning more about whatever event caused the separation in the first place.

The rhythms and dynamic shared by Data and Dr. Tainer feels real as to how a long lost mother and son might reconnect. Data’s hesitant at first. Dr. Tainer tells embarrassing stories about him as a child. (See also: “Journey to Babel” from TOS) Data wants to learn more about his mom’s life. Dr. Tainer opens up old wounds in sharing how things happened. They share interests like music and art. The smiling mom looks favorably upon her son’s achievements and growth. Questions are raised about why he was left behind, which cause pain, at least of a sort, for both of them.

There’s a messiness to all of it, a mixing of reluctance, harmony, and hurt that feels right for this type of reunion. Much of that owes to Fionnula Flanagan, who plays Dr. Tainer. She slips into the doting mom role so easily with Brent Spiner that you by the implied familiarity there. At the same time, though, the way she winces to hear that Dr. Soong died, or crumples to recall how it was her idea to abandon Data when the Crystalline Entity struck, or melts when she hears from Data how much Noonien truly loved her, is masterful. There’s even the believable bearing of a mother who’s lost young children and the hardships that come with trying again, which she sells beautifully.

It’s absurd to bring in a never-before-seen-or-heard-of mom this late in the day, but the strength of Flanagan’s performance and the believable dynamic written and performed between her and Data makes you buy it in the moment, which is what really matters.

And if that’s all there were in “Inheritance”, with the expected crisis of the week (a planetary core that needs stabilizing), I think I’d be content with it. Dr. Tainer’s arrival reeks of contrivance, but the combined wholesomeness of finding someone who loves you and can fill in gaps in your personal history, mixed with the pain of learning about why they abandoned you and the guilt that’s kept them away for so long, is a strong tonic.

Unfortunately, the episode takes it one contrivance further. It turns out that Dr. Tainer is herself an android, a synthetic replacement for the genuine article made by Dr. Soong after the original Dr. Tainer was injured in the escape from Omicron Theta. The reveal is a bridge too far. It requires a level of advancement in cybernetics we’ve never seen before. (Give or take Harry Mudd’s androids and Ira Graves, admittedly.) It requires a bevy of flimsy explanations for why no one’s ever discovered this fact before. And it requires an even more convenient chip embedded in Dr. Tainer’s wiring that can be used to summon a holographic version of Dr. Soong who can answer anybody’s questions about what the hell’s going on and deliver some emotional exposition.

I’ll confess, I remembered the twist of this one. So maybe it hits with more force if you don’t know what’s coming, and you can just enjoy the shock rather than pick apart the logic behind it. A long lost parent in a show’s final season is enough of a stretch on its own. The tortured logic to support her being a syntehtic life form and never realizing it for all these years is too much on top of that.

Even then, though, it leads to some important ethical and emotional material. Data must decide whether to tell her, over his father’s objections, or let her continue in the dark. Data’s friends make good arguments on both sides of the ledger, about whether it’s better to hear the truth from a loved one or go on in blissful ignorance. There’s a legitimate ethical question at the heart of the dilemma, whether it’s right or fair to keep an important truth about someone from them for their own good.

Data ultimately chooses not to say anything. I like that decision, less because I believe it’s the clearly moral choice, but because he picks that path despite the fact that he’d rather tell her the truth for his own selfish reasons. It would affirm that he’s not alone in the universe. They could commiserate over being synthetic lifeforms, have something even deeper in common than they already do. Data chooses to give that up because he thinks the alternative would do the most good for his mother. That’s a powerful thing.

It’s especially powerful as a negative image of the choice she made. She wanted to leave Data behind when they escaped. Dr. Tainer was afraid that he would turn out like Lore, something understandable but which she clearly still feels torn up about. Data’s parallel choice, to not upend his mother’s world, to let her live the life his father wanted for her, shows remarkable grace, as does passing on Dr. Soong’s regrets and affections. He gives her peace, something more than he received, and it’s remarkably big of this still-budding soul.

That’s enough to pull “Inheritance” into “good” territory for me. You can’t think too hard about how we arrive at this relationship or the dilemmas it entails if you want to enjoy it. The missing parent coming aboard by chance, the secret android who can fool sensors and herself, the wiped memories and scrubbed records that make it all work tear past the limits of plausibility even on a science fiction show. But the story and emotion here, of an estranged mother and child reuniting, of a dark chapter in an unknown history filled in, of a compassionate choice made at the expense of one’s own hopes, buoy the episode’s narrative excesses.

That’s what stays with me from Star Trek. Beyond the warp engines and technical specs and implausible character debuts, I think about those stories and the souls within them, the ones that remain the most human.

(SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard: It’s interesting thinking about Dr. Tainer’s existence in reference to Picard’s own mind and body transfer. This lays more of the groundwork than I recalled, and while I still call foul on some of the plausibility of it, this one and “The Schizoid Man” at least set something of a precedent for it.